Creepers Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4
FUGITIVE FERTILIZER

A full week of rain had swept away any signs of Newl Hogue, his toxic load and his battered F-150. It was mid August and the National Hurricane Center was anxiously monitoring a series of tropical storms boiling in the Atlantic twenty miles offshore. The early tempests had yet to whip themselves up to Hurricane strength but they were dumping barrels of rain on most of the state, causing sporadic flooding and downed power lines from Miami to Jacksonville.
The creeper soaked up the gushing waters surging through the bottom of its sinkhole, drawing strength from the raw sewage and street runoff swirling around its roots. The brown water was laced with toxins from chemicals Floridians poured down their drains and dumped into their sewers, everything from used motor oil and old paint to pesticides and solvents.
Creepers had fanned out over the acres of Elephant grass, mashing it down, forcing it to give ground. Eventually they completely took over the swamp, leaving dead cypress trees poking up from the brackish waters like bleached whale ribs, bowed in submission from the weight of parasitic the vines, killed by creepers boring into their trunks, sucking their sap and sinking their roots into the moist earth next to them and siphoning away the trees’ nutrients. The creepers already covered four square miles and were spreading fast. So fast that if someone had been around to watch, they would have been able to see them grow, as if through the cinematic magic of time elapsed photography.
The creepers moved in slow motion like an enormous wave of, green vipers, tangled together into a mass of foliage that rose to heights of sixty feet or more in its epicenter above Newl Houge’s sinkhole. Along its perimeter, it repeatedly swelled to forty feet cresting, then crashing forward to sink thousands of taproots into the sandy soil, take hold, swell and pull itself forward, a growing green wave of destruction.
It was raining again, wind scented with the sulfuric odor of salt and soil licked at Beauford’s brow like Satan’s breath. He stumbled out to his 1988 Impala holding his arm over his eyes, insufficient protection against the sting of the monsoon. He threw open the door, slid behind the wheel, slammed it shut and held his breath as he turned the key . . . clickity-clickity, “Shit!” He grabbed a monkey wrench from the passenger seat, hauled himself out of the car and popped the rusty hood as the wind and rain ripped at his skin. He whacked the old Chevy’s starter three times. Then soaked to the skin squeezed back behind the cracked wheel. “Okay you rusty bucket of blots.” He turned the key: clickity. . . click, Varoom! Grinning he pulled a silver knob and the headlights illuminated the front of his double-wide. He flipped his wipers on high and backed out at a cock-eyed angle unable to see through the sheet of rain sluicing across his rear window. Then it started to hail, hail which pounded against the rusted roof like the fists of a thousand trolls. He dropped the car into drive and stomped on the gas, there was a loud thump. He realized he’d knocked over the neighbor’s mailbox when he glanced through his rearview mirror.
Beauford sped down Sandy Pines Road swerving from one side of to the other, his chin hung over the wheel of his dead Dad’s Impala. He squinted as if that would help him see the white dashes on the twisted ribbon of black road ahead. In his drunken state the best plan seemed to be to keep the flashing white lines streaking between the front wheels.
Suddenly a sharp bend he’d driven around a hundred times caught him by surprise. He slammed on the brakes and slid off into the crunchy gravel of the shoulder. Unfazed he jerked the wheel to the right and stomped on the accelerator. The Impala’s bald tires spun, the car lurched forward and Beauford swung back onto the pavement. Now cautious, he focused on the curving yellow lines as if they’d guide him to Oz.
The rain had eased up and he wasn’t really going that fast, perhaps forty in a thirty mile zone. He’d even anticipated the curve, leaned into it just about right but the road suddenly became began to loop he misjudged by a degree or two and veered too far to the right, regained control at the last second and swerved left, safe somewhere in the vicinity of center, he breathed a sigh of relief then . . . he saw it. “What the?” He mashed the brake pedal to the floor but the unbalanced weight of the Chevy spun round like a midget racer.
The road had come to an abrupt end at the edge of an immense jungle. As the car slid into the creeper’s thorny tendrils, they clawed at the Impala’s body like a pride of lions. All four tires were slashed. The roots had not penetrated the asphalt: therefore, the car’s mass and momentum propelled it fifteen yards beneath the growing wave of vegetation. As the Impala slid, Beauford clinched the steering wheel in a vise like death grip throwing it first right then left to no avail. Sobriety washed over him like an icy wave. Eventually the car slowed to a scratching halt, as if the hand of the Devil had slammed down on its roof.
Beauford sat immobilized, gripping the wheel. The only sound was the rhythmic sweep of the wipers, the ceaseless patter of rain and an occasional scratching sound. He flicked on his brights and gasp . . . all he could see was an endless tangle of thorny green. The car sat askew on the roadway, its headlights illuminating a slash of tangled thicket. Above him hung white blossoms the size of babies’ heads. Millions of curved red thorns the size of meat hooks glistened in the moonlight. A gust of wind swept through the bramble and blew a branch against the driver’s side window. In a panicked state of paranoia he saw the red thorns as the claws of a beast, he screamed.
An hour passed and time helped Beauford get a grip on sanity. He decided to plow the car back through bramble on the rims rather than abandon the safety of the vehicle and attempt to pick his way through on foot. He placed his clammy fingers on the ignition as if he were about to try and crack a safe . . . took a breath and turned the key clickity-click . . . clickity-click. “Goddamn it!” He smashed his fists on the dash, flipped off the wipers but left the lights on for security. He searched round on the floor for his wrench, found it under the seat and snatched it up. He tried to open his door but could only push it open an inch or so. A mass of springy vines were mashing up against the side of the car. “Shit!” He slid over to the passenger door and tried it but encountered the same problem. Claustrophobia burned through to panic, setting off his explosive temper. Suddenly he swept the wrench up in a low arch and smashed out the driver’s side window. The glass disintegrated into a shower of cubic fragments, a handful flew into his face as a thorny tendril sprang in through the shattered window like a Vietnamese jungle-trap.
Beauford shivered, as a damp, over-powering, pungent, blossom scented breeze, swept through the car. Suddenly he sneezed and his skin began to itch.
His sudden burst of temper cleared the fog of fear and anger from his mind, now he was pissed that he’d smashed his window for no good reason. Damn, why didn’t I just roll it down? Gotta’ get a grip gotta’ get the fuck out of here. He thought, but when he tried to stuff his two hundred and thirty-pound, fifty year old body through the busted window tendrils’ thorns tagged his shirt, like a leopard’s paw. He ripped himself free and tumbled to the wet pavement, barking the skin from his palms and knees. The wrench slipped from his grasp and skittered beneath the car. His cheek pressed to the wet asphalt, his eyes swept beneath the car and locked onto the gleam of the wrench.
The monsoon started to rage again above the canopy, water dripped from leaves the size of stop signs and from the points of spear sized thorns. Wind swept through the vicious bramble, splintering like the hiss of banshees. Beauford rolled onto his belly and clambered beneath the Impala groping for his wrench. When his bleeding fingertips touched the cold steel, he snatched it up and backed out bumping his head.
Soaked through, Beauford shivered as he popped the hood: more from dread than cold. He gave the starter three whacks and climbed back through the shattered window like an overweight Indy driver, scratching his face, hands and torso on coils of tendrils that looped down to snag his skin and clothes like living razor-wire.
Trepidation struck a tremor in his fingers as he reached for the ignition: he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together then turned the key, clickity-click . . . clickity-click. “Shit!” He slammed his fist on the dash and leaned on the horn, trying to honk out an SOS. Is it one long and two shorts or long, short?
Why hadn’t he waited for Sheriff Musser? And faced the music. At least, he thought, I’d be sleeping in a warm jail cell now.
Rifling through the glove box he found a stale pack of Rhonda’s Salem 100s and a Bic lighter: his Winston’s were too soggy to smoke. He despised menthols but lit one anyway, hoping to sooth his growing anxiety but the mint flavored smoke made him cough. “Ugh, how can she smoke these things?” Subconsciously he scratched his arms and belly, then flicked the cigarette out the window, sneezed and tried to focus on what the hell to do next. His eye began to itch and the more he rubbed them the worse it got. The unknown easily rattled a man of Beauford’s intelligence, and comprehending how this jungle had sprouted, literally over night, would distort even a sane man’s perception of reality.
The sea of green, surrounding him, brought back terrifying memories of his bloody six-week tour of Vietnam. Fortunately there, he’d gotten stoned one night on some really good Thai-stick and stumbled in front of a jeep full of drunk Marines: the impact fractured his pelvis - just enough to earn him a coveted one-way ticket home. He made a full recovery, but faked a limp long enough to have his name permanently etched into the government’s computer gravy train: he’d been receiving full-disability checks ever since.
But tonight, like a bad ‘Twilight Zone’ rerun, Vietnam returned. Every snapping twig made his left eye twitch, like the bolt of an enemies’ rifle. Beauford peered into the emerald maze, certain he’d seen an angry Gook easing out from beneath the undergrowth; a vindictive, little olive man, wiry, with burnt black eyes, one of the few clever ones that survived his unit’s slaughter. Them Gook bastards are out there. And one’s gonna’ pop right out and open up on me, full auto, any minute now, get me back for torching his village, or slip up behind me and slit my throat for mowing down those women and kids.
An owl hooted and the sound started a scratched, jerky home movie running on the warped reels of his mind. A movie of he and Sergeant Noorlander herding pathetic, crying people into a muddy drainage ditch and . . . Scratch . . .tic. A growing creeper unfolded, drawing its thorns across the trunk of the car like the rake of Grizzly’s paw. Beauford jumped, too afraid to turn. To afraid to look and see what was back, there. It’s a Gook, come back from the dead to get me. Come back to kill me for the horror Noorlander and I dealt them in that infernal jungle thirty years ago!
Panic raised its lazy head like a cobra in tall grass and Beauford became convinced the endless snarl of green was closing in on him . . . and it was. He considered trying to pick his way back through to where the road and he had been swallowed. After all how far could it be? He scratched the rash of bumps on his arms and neck until the skin was raw. When he blinked his eyes stuck shut. The itching was driving him mad. What the hell is making me itch? His rheumy eyes itched and his nose ran. He broke into a sneezing fit then let out a raspy cough. Overcome by a sudden urge to flee, he jerked up on the door handle then slammed his shoulder against it, forgetting it was mashed up against the tangle of creepers. He reached his arm out of the shattered window, reached up to grab the edge of the roof to haul himself out. Suddenly he was screaming as a bolt of pain shot from his hand to his brain. He looked up in horror at his quivering arm. It felt like he’d been bitten by a venomous snake but he’d impaled his arm on a six-inch red thorn. Beauford trembled then shrieked in agony, unable to retrieve his throbbing arm. It was as if a gigantic wasp had landed on the roof of the Impala and jabbed its stinger right through his forearm. Seeing the blood begin to trickle down his swollen arm, forced him to get control of himself. Somehow he managed to extract himself from the car one handed. As his feet touched down among a fresh jumble of leaves and barbed vines they sprung up and snagged his polyester trousers.
Pouring rain, dripped onto his head, ran into his eyes and for a moment cooled the itch. Beauford blinked with shocked amazement at his impaled arm, which had swollen up like a water filled balloon. Trembling he pulled the wrench from his back pocket and pinned the creeper to the roof of the car as if it were a poisonous snake. His palm had turned blue and his arm felt like it was filled with lava. He stared at the curved red thorn poking up from his arm like red-hot spike. He took a deep breath and with one quick jerk extracted it. His body quaked with pain and he fell to his knees wheezing. He fished a handkerchief from his hip pocket blew his nose, coughed then crudely wrapped the filthy cloth around his wound.
A sense of direction was never one of Beauford’s strong points. He was forever getting lost. He peered down the bit of road that was visible to him. The asphalt had been engulfed in both directions by dense vegetation. Which way did I come from? The rain continued beating down on the net of foliage above filling his ears and his mind with a constant sizzle. He took a wild guess and started off. For once, Beauford’s sense of direction was correct. But, he was impeded by streamers growing across the road. With his left arm hanging heavenly at his side like a rotten sausage He stumbled blindly on until he came to a dead fall. A huge white pine had fallen across the road, brought down like Gulliver by the enormous weight of hundreds of coils of parasitic creepers, wrapped around it like barbed fire hoses. The tree swung lazily before him, suspended by vines, thick as a fat man’s leg. Over or under, unsteady on his feet he wondered. Around was impossible, the growth turned to a dense menacing jungle a few yards from the road.
Dripping wet Beauford’s goose flesh had begun to blister up with dime-sized pustules, a reaction to the poisonous glycoside secreted by the plant’s leaves and thorns. As the poison soaked into his cuts, scratches and the pores of his skin his mind began to splinter. Exhausted, terrified and covered from head to foot with bloody scratches, he knew crawling under the dead fall was his only option. But what if that old pine tree comes crashing down Bue? “Ain’t no other way Bud, gotta’ get out of this jungle, got a get out before the Gooks find me.”
Squatting down he tried to duck walk the three yards under the fallen canopy, the way the army had taught him but that was when he was young, fit and mean. His knees gave out first. Then his legs went numb and became as useless as wood blocks.
Reaching out with his good hand he carefully lifted a vine that looped down in front of his face. The overpowering sweet stench of wet blossoms hanging like decapitated heads above him made him gag. Hunched over he shuffled a few feet forward on his knees crawling along on what once had been Sandy Pines Road, keeping his good hand on the swinging tree and his bloodshot eyes riveted on the solid yellow lines ahead. He heard a sound and snapped his head to the left. All he saw was a sign flapping in the wind,
Speed Limit
35 mph.
He looked back down at the bright yellow lines: “Off to see the Wizard?” A menacing green growth covered the road. The tendrils appeared to be alive: some whipped from side to side as others coiled and uncoiled, as if searching for something - prey? Forced to continue in a stooped waddle Beauford’s size thirteen’s soon became hopelessly tangled. Ensnared he lost his balance and tipped over like a top-heavy steer caught in lasso. He fell on his side, onto strings of swaying tendrils. His swollen arm was crushed beneath his own weight and punctured by dozens of pin-sized thorns that left neatly spaced tracks up and down the blotched skin of his injured limb. More of the poisonous glycosides were injected beneath the taught purple skin. Screaming he rolled onto his back, further, impaling himself on a bed of nail-sized thorns. He arched his back as much as a fat man could and began to thrash about. Soon he became delirious from the effects of the toxins. It felt like huge hornets were jabbing their stingers into his body.
An unusually strong gust of wind swept down the passage that was once a road, above tree limbs snapped, the old white pine began to sway, suddenly the growing wet vines slipped and the tree crashed to the pavement, causing the tightly woven tendrils wrapped around Beauford’s legs and torso to cinch and jerk him into the air. The crack of snapping limbs and the groan of taught vines echoed through the humid air, but nobody heard it but Beauford. He coughed and spit out a pitiful cry of, “Help.” from blue lips.
Strength spent; Beauford gave up his struggle and hung helplessly like a snared rabbit slowly swaying a few feet above the pavement. A tendril slid across his face like a wet ell. It took only ten minutes for it to grow around his neck. Others probed the orifices of his ears, nose and mouth. A straw of green began to grow and poke into the corner of his left eye. He blinked back blood tears as it screwed its way into the optic chiasm of his brain. In the throws of strangulation, unable to scream his mouth puckered open and closed like a landed carp. Another creeper exploited his open mouth and grew down his throat seeking nourishment, purple faced, he gagged, choked and fought to suck air as others tightened their grip like the coils of Anacondas. It took twenty-five minutes for Beauford to die, by then sprouts filled his belly like a knot of green worms. The roots drained the warm beer from his stomach and sopped up the remains of his hungry man diner.

Sheriff Calvin P. Musser the III was sleeping when the call came in. A one-man operation: the only law in Leigh Acres - population unknown, but he estimated it at between 800 and 1000 souls. Most good, decent people but like any community, there were some bad eggs but few were foolish enough to mess with Sheriff Calvin P. Musser. A good percentage of the inhabitants were migrant workers come to pick oranges, tomatoes and strawberries, people of little means; many illegal, most never caused any trouble.
Calvin P. Musser, part time sheriff, didn’t care about a person’s state of citizenship, he treated all equally and never abused or deported a migrant worker who had a bit too much to drink or dared to fight with a tight fisted land owner over wages. His job, as he saw it, was to protect the people and their property. And that meant all the people, and at $500.00 a week, he was, as everyone in Leigh knew, one hell of a bargain. No one ever ran against him for office and no one ever opposed his election, not even those who’d come between him and the law. He suspected that when his day of retirement dawned the office would cease to exist. Personally, he would rather see that happen then have the job filled by some red-necked, power hungry prick.
For the time being he had settled in, and that’s how everyone seemed to like it, because Calvin treated people, even criminals with as much respect and fairness as circumstances allowed.
The state police respected the big lawman of Leigh too and they were responded quickly whenever he made called for assistance.
Calvin winced as he shifted his six foot five, two hundred and fifty-seven pound, former, pro-wrestling body into the seat of his truck. His back always pinched up a bit when he woke too fast. He hated rushing out without plowing through his normal routine of stretching, weight training and brisk two-mile walk.
Wind driven sheets of rain were being blown in from the coast. The weathermen were hinting at a hurricane. He flipped his wipers on high and clicked the brights on. Nights like this made him wonder: why the hell do I keep letting the City council talk me into taking this job - for another two year term? Hell, he sure didn’t need the money: he’d retired at thirty-five with nearly six million dollars, all wisely invested in stocks and bonds which provided him with a substantial income. Was it civic duty? Or was it less altruistic, perhaps even egotistical? Was he trying to give life to his foolish fictional ringside role as, The Lawman: his wrestling persona. No, he’d turned his back on that phase of his life. It was, in a way embarrassing to look back and see himself strutting into that ring, wearing white tights and sporting an oversized gold-plated badge, donning a white Stetson and pretending to take on the bad-guys of pro-wrestling. He’d gotten into it for the money when a pro-football contract failed to materialize after college. He’d graduated with honors and could have gone on to teach literature or math at several Ivy league schools, but the money sucked.
As big and dangerous as he was, God blessed Calvin with rugged good looks, and wisely gave the giant of a man a wet fuse. But now Beauford and Rhonda Strunk were starting to piss him off. This was the second time this week Rhonda had called him out to settle one of their stupid spats. If Beauford had beat Rhonda up again he was going back to Orlando County Jail for another thirty-day stint. And if Rhonda gave him any lip she’d caboose him to the jailhouse.
When Calvin pulled up the yellow bug lights outside the Strunk’s dingy mobile home were on, but Beauford’s old Impala wasn’t parked in the gravel drive. Great, one of them took off. Probably cruising around drunk too.
Calvin hauled himself out of his new, white Ford Expedition, emblazoned with a three foot gold star and the bold statement, Leigh Sheriff. Of course he had paid for the truck himself and its conversion into a first rate police vehicle. He didn’t mind. He pulled open the tattered screen door and rapped on the imitation wood front door with the butt of his flashlight. Damn, no answer. He tried the door. “Huh, unlocked. This isn’t good.”
He walked in and called out in a commanding baritone, “Rhonda? Beauford?” No response, the TV was blaring a ‘World Federation of Wrestling’ Match. The irony wasn’t missed, superstitious: Calvin interpreted it as an omen - a bad one. I hope this isn’t the beginning of another bad night?
Maybe one of them was passed out back in the bedroom? Yea right, if one of them was in the back bedroom, they sure as hell weren’t sleeping. The over turned ironing board and the shattered poodle confirmed their spat had turned physical, no surprise there. He stepped over an overturned chair and walked toward the dim wedge of light coming from the bedroom. He walked sideways down the narrow hallway: his shoulders too broad a span for the tight passage.
He found Rhonda in bed, out cold. She’d come to twenty minutes earlier but passed out again, still stoned on Sloe Gin. When Calvin rolled her onto her back, she began to snore. Well, he thought, at least I didn’t find a body. He noticed her left eye was blue and swollen. He shook her shoulder. “Rhonda? Rhonda!”
She stirred, an eye winked open pirate-like. “Huh? Beauford you fuc. . . .”
“Rhonda it’s Sheriff Musser, where’s Beauford? Did he punch you out again?”
She tried to lift her head but the room whirled. Her head plopped back to the soiled pillow. “Yea,” she mumbled, “The bastard threw a beer at me. Then he chased me back here, kicked in the door and slugged me. I want him arrested!” She croaked. “I need some Excedrin. Be a dear and get me two Excedrin out of that drawer Sheriff.”
Calvin found the bottle and shook two blue capsules into her palm. Rhonda popped them in her mouth and washed them down with a warm glass of something from a plastic cup by her bed.
Calvin towered over her as he took out a black-leather notebook and jotted down what little she’d told him. “Well Beauford’s not here Rhonda. Any idea where he went?”
She seemed disappointed. “No, but he ain’t going far: car’s damn near out of gas and Beauford’s already blown his disability check.” She scooted back and propped herself up against the headboard with two pillows. “He’ll come back though, always does.
Calvin shook his head. What a waste of time, he could be home in bed, but now because of these two backwater boozers. He was going to have to spend the rest of the night hunting down a drunk driver, and once he found the bastard, he’d have to lock him up and sit by his cell until the State boys sent someone down to pick him up. That is if the stupid fool hadn’t run his car into something or someone before he found him.
“Look Rhonda, do you want me to run you down to the hospital or do you want me to go hunt down your husband? I can’t do both.”
She lit a cigarette and leaned back casually studying the good looking, uniformed hunk standing at the foot of her bed. She decided it would be more fun to stir the pot. “Go find the son-of-a-bitch! He’s rung my bell for the last time!”
Calvin left her there in bed, looking like a beat up, well dressed, bag lady. She’d probably lay there till noon tomorrow. He felt sleazy just talking to her.
Rhonda Strunk was a typical Wrestling fan, once he’d even autographed a picture for her - that was back when he first came to town. Now it made him reflect on how he’d made his fortune and the class of people he’d pandered to all those years. We’ll he thought, people did worse things for entertainment. To him Pro Wrestling was akin to slapstick comedy.
The rain had stopped as suddenly as a turned off shower; an odd, unusually strong, smell of vegetation hung in the air.
Since he’d taken the southern route to Sandy Pines and hadn’t seen Beauford, Calvin decided to continue north maybe he’d get lucky and find him on the side of the road, out of gas and sleeping it off. He radioed in Beauford’s description and the make and model of his car to the Highway Patrol in case they’d already pulled him over, now that would be hitting the Perfecta: to be able to dump Beauford on the Highway boys and go back to bed.
He took it slow along the slick curves of Sandy Pines Road, often stopping to train his search light on unpaved side roads, checking for fresh tire tracks. He pulled over on a turn off where just last month he’d busted three teenagers smoking crack and splitting up the booty from a bait shop burglary. He trained his headlights down the road and thought for a moment he was dreaming: just a dozen yards down the turn off, the gravel road dead-ended. Huh, I could swear; what the hell is that? Looks like the Amazon jungle down there. The usual cadence of tree frogs seemed amplified. It was as if there were millions of the sticky olive creatures out there, an infestation clinging to every leaf and limb.
Thoughts of madness fractured into reality when the Highway patrol radioed back to him, no sign of Beauford or his Impala.
Deciding to leave the mystery of the overgrown road until morning, Calvin backed out and drove on another quarter mile or so. He began to wonder about the unusual odor, it smelt like a spilled bottle of drug store toilet water, the kind people buy senile, old ladies, who live in nursing homes.
When Calvin rounded a bend the road became littered with blossoms, huge blossoms, rolling across the road like bald, severed heads. When he touched his breaks to get a closer look the truck skidded several feet before stopping, as if he were driving on snow.
In his six years as sheriff, Calvin had never seen anything like this. Driving ahead at fifteen miles per hour he swept the shoulder and roadside with his search light, in the distance he saw nothing but leaves splattered with white, and leaves, leaves as big as kites and red spiked vines the size of fire hoses. Is this a nightmare? He wondered. Are Beauford Strunk and his wife really at home? Am I in bed?
Suddenly the road came to an abrupt end. He hit his breaks and gripped the wheel allowing the antilock breaks of the heavy Expedition to feather the truck to a smooth stop inches from a twisted wall of tangled vines. “What the hell is going on out here?” Calvin grabbed his flashlight and climbed out of his truck, which he left running, lights on high beam.
The mass of vegetation was immense, it looked like God had taken a pitchfork and heaped acres of thickets onto the road.
The stuff seemed to be climbing up every bush, tree and power pole, every structure in sight was covered with it. The night was still except for the cadence of tree frogs. Where the road ended was a low passage. He backed the truck up a few yards. What’s that? Looks like headlights. I wonder if? Calvin turned off his truck and killed his lights. Two weak beams lit the depths of the jungle ahead.
He threw open the tailgate of the Expedition and rummaged through a box of gear, he dug out a battered yellow helmet with a miner’s light on it, a pair of knee-pads and a machete. After switching on the light to make sure the batteries were still good, Calvin mashed the helmet on his head and tugged on the kneepads. Then he set off hacking his way through the bramble.
A few yards in a creeper’s thorn caught the side of his cheek, the wound stung as if the plant were some kind of nettle. Even though he was following the road the only way for him to continue was to crawl on his hands and knees, which was painful: years in the ring had battered his knees. He’d had surgery twice since his retirement. Calvin crawled trying to avoid wire thin vines that moved like tethered worms. Some hung from above like trolling lines armed with curved red thorns. They looked like un-baited hooks. They repeatedly snagged his shirt and clawed at his skin. The air was humid and thick with the overpowering fragrance of the head-sized blossoms. It made him want to gag. His eyes itched and watered, he sneezed then coughed as if he’d been exposed to some type of poisonous dust. It brought back memories of the time he’d wandered into some friends’ barn in South Carolina. They’d just flea dipped their coon dogs and he’d breathed in a lung full of the yellow dust. His reaction had been severe, the insecticide caused his throat to swell and his lungs went into an asthmatic like attack. To breathe, he had to stick his head out of the window of his father’s Buick all the way to the hospital to force enough air into his constricted lungs.
When he hacked through the half dozen creepers strung across the road like barbed wire, a sticky honey like resin oozed from the severed ends of the vines. Twenty yards ahead Calvin’s path was blocked by a pine tree wrapped in parasitic vines, vines that strangled it like pythons, he was about to attempt clambering over it when he spotted what was left Beauford Strunk.
The thing hanging suspended in an ever-growing green web did not look like a corpse. It was like coming across a rotten log, a log that by a fluke of nature had a peculiar, human shape to it, further examination reveled what was actually in the creepers’ grasp.
They had screwed themselves into his nostrils and ears. They filled the space behind his eyes like a root bound pot, giving him an odd cross-eyed expression of puzzlement. His arms and legs were tightly bound to his side, mummy-like. His bodily fluids appeared to have been completely siphoned off. Calvin poked him with his flashlight and Beauford swung as if he were made of papier-mâché’.
Calvin didn’t see the creeper uncoil behind his head, but he felt its hooked thorns snag the lobe of his ear. He jerked his head, driving the barbs in deep. In defense, he tore at it puncturing the calloused skin of his hands and nearly shredding his ear in the fight. He scrambled back towards his truck. By the time, he reached the Expedition the skin of his head, shoulders and hands were covered with deep scratches and he was covered with blood.
To his horror, his truck was surrounded by creepers. They had coiled around the eighteen-inch tires like Anacondas trying to swallow feral pigs. Others the size of water pipes had begun to grow up the back attaching themselves with palm sized green suckers that looked like giant frog feet.
He ripped a creeper from the door. The tendril lazily looped around his wrist and squeezed. He peeled it off, leapt into his truck, slammed the door, started the engine, dropped the transmission into four-wheel all terrain drive and stomped on the accelerator. The truck swayed, the engine red-lined, all four wheels spun chewing into vines and sending up clouds of pungent brown smoke. Calvin slammed the truck into reverse rocked it back and forth a couple of times then dropped it into drive and hit the gas. The two-ton vehicle lurched forward and one by one, tendrils snapped like the bow lines of a runaway freighter. A cable-sized creeper wrapped around the hitch snapped last, it whipped back like a bullwhip, busting the rear window with an explosive crack and spattering the truck with sticky golden goo.
Calvin fish-tailed down the road coughing, bleeding and trying to catch his breath while the tires thumped over the cabbage sized blossoms that littered the road.
He itched as if hen had rolled in poison ivy and his arms and legs stung like he’d ran through a field of nettles. Is this a nightmare? A hideous nightmare where everything is green but the red thorns and those putrid white blossoms hanging from enormous vines like skulls.
In this dream like botanical world, the only colors were green, white and the spattered blood red of those trapped within it.